Maricela Magana/Michael Priest Photography
In a powerful live interview, actress Rose McGowan sat down with reporter Ronan Farrow Thursday night at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. Farrow, the author of the New Yorker article that gave a voice to Harvey Weinstein’s alleged victims, led the discussion, which followed the recent release of McGowan’s memoir, Brave, and the premiere of her E! docuseries Citizen Rose. McGowan has become a powerful voice in the #MeToo movement since her allegation that Weinstein raped her at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival.
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Farrow began the conversation by asking McGowan how she was feeling. “I don’t know what it’s like to come home from a war, but on paper…I can tell you it’s a war,” she said about feeling unsupported by her family over the holidays. “And nobody addressed it…. Nobody said, ‘How are you? Are you okay? This must be hard. Wow. Are you tired?’ Because it is, you know? But I cry a couple times a day because I have to. There’s not a lot of time to process, you know?”
They discussed her childhood growing up in the Children of God cult and the ways in which she feels Hollywood executives have orchestrated attacks on her (including an incident last year in which she was arrested on drug charges).
Farrow asked how she copes with her long history of being mistreated, and McGowan explained why it’s important for her to deal with her past. “I contend with it to push me through the atmosphere,” she said. “I contend with it because it’s wrong. And it’s wrong to so many of us. I contend with it because I hear women’s voices everywhere I go. I contend with it because I’ve always heard the underdog.”
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That feeling of being hunted in Hollywood haunts McGowan. Farrow asked if she feels her years of experiencing abuse may have made her a target for people in the industry. “Do you feel in some way that you were predisposed?” He asked. “That predators saw something in you along the way?”
“There’s something people don’t talk about in all of this, is beauty,” McGowan said. “It gets forgotten, but we were beautiful. We were like ethereal, extraordinary beings. And we got hunted. Every room, we’re targets. These creeps. These creepy men everywhere, all over the world. Like, ‘That’s the one I’m going for.’ And if you then couple that with consistent and extreme abuse, and then you couple that with just being a woman and a girl in the world—yeah, you’re fucked.”
After McGowan read a passage from her book, Farrow asked her what she’s afraid of. “Assassination,” she responded. “I know my life,” she said. “And I know my reality. And I know that people like me get killed.” McGowan went on to reference an exchange she had with a trans woman at her book signing the night before, though she alleged that the woman was a “paid plant” based on people she had watching the interaction. “And you don’t think there are people who will hear that and say this was an angry member of the public?” Farrow asked. “I don’t care what people say!” McGowan responded. “Please get that straight. I really don’t. Because I can’t. Because it will kill me.”
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Toward the end of the interview Farrow asked McGowan about her comments regarding her Charmed co-star and friend of Georgina Chapman, Alyssa Milano. The night before, she had called Milano “a lie.” McGowan stood by her statement, asking, “So? Is that not my prerogative?”
After the event she tweeted a gif of the two actresses from the show, with the caption, “Let’s talk it out sister.”
The conversation wrapped up with a question about what kind of punishment she believes Weinstein and similar men deserve.
“See, that’s the thing,” McGowan said. “I just want him to fall off the planet. It’s the others. It’s the machine around him…. What does it look like?…. I don’t know. I can hope. I have never—I hate that handcuffs have been on me and not him.”
